Emulation as a strategy for the preservation of games: the KEEP project


Pinchbeck Dan Anderson David Delve Janet Ciuffreda Antonio Otemu Getaneh Lange Andreas
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Game preservation is a critical issue for game studies. Access to historic materials forms a vital core to research and this field is no different. However, there are serious challenges to overcome for preservationists in terms of developing a strategic and inclusion programme to retain access to obsolete games. Emulation, as a strategy already applied by major developers and the gaming community, is introduced and the KEEP project, designed to create an open emulation access platform is described.

 

Where have all the games gone? Explorations on the cultural significance of digital games and preservation


Barwick Joanna Muir Adrienne Dearnley James
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

It is now 50 years since the development of the first computer game but despite the proliferation of digital games in our society - with an industry which is flourishing and an average of 9 games sold every second of every day in 2007, it seems that these products are not as valued as the products of other cultural industries, such as film and television, and they are being excluded from the preservation of our digital heritage. This paper will focus on research interviews undertaken with people in the academic community. It will highlight that the growing academic interest in digital games is being hindered by a lack of research collections to support historical study. Researchers acknowledge that the study of digital games is a relatively new discipline and that outside academia, there is still little understanding of their cultural significance. However, they recognise the importance of protecting games as part of our digital heritage to ensure that future generations are able to understand the development of a valuable aspect of our social history. In other words, this research has underlined that games are considered a culture worth studying and something in need of preserving.

 

Before It’s Too Late: Preserving Games across the Industry / Academia divide


Lowood Henry Armstrong Andrew Monnens Devin Vowell Zach Ruggill Judd McAllister Ken Donahue Rachel Pinchbeck Dan
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper is an edited version of the International Game Developers Association’s Game Preservation Special Interest Group’s recent white paper. The specific threats to preserving digital games are outlined, as is the importance of games as cultural objects. The current strategies for preservation across a range of stakeholders are presented followed by an argument for why preservation matters to industry and what industry can contribute. Finally, the unique potential relationship between academia and industry in this matter is explored, and a call for partnership projects and strategic dialogue is made.

 

Let Me Entertain You: Designing for Surveillance and Online Gaming


Devers Deirdre Wilson Stephanie
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Multi-player online gaming environments are designed with the intent of providing entertaining experiences to players that not only foster re-playability but also to cultivate an ongoing allegiance or loyalty to the game publishers’/developers’ brand or various assets (e.g. Master Chief, Grand Theft Auto etc.). Design elements such as webcams, activity monitoring between players, and online presence cues make possible player practices within online game-based environments that, though surveillance-oriented, become the key ingredients that work to construct entertaining online encounters. Yet when similar features are transposed to other less playcentric spaces (e.g. workplace), whether online or offline, they can be perceived as threatening or unwanted. The surveillance networks created by the online games themselves and associated ‘meeting places’ [9] (e.g. Facebook) as well as surveillance activities in these digital spaces are vehicles for creating and sustaining entertaining experiences. The presence of surveillance-oriented design features and their subsequent and on-going use by individuals, create a more entrenched level of engagement and intimacy through repetitive contact. . The aim of this paper is the analysis of various online games and meeting places that comprise a surveillance network in order to identify the various design features and the player activities they give rise to which can constitute various types of surveillance (e.g. participatory, mutual). Building on the idea of surveillance having an entertainment function, I argue that in terms of the expression of a user experience (UX) in these particular digital spaces, surveillance-oriented mechanisms and practices are fundamental to the creation of enduring entertainment experiences which would not be possible without the reliance on the necessity of exposure in both places and of individuals.

 

Horror Videogames and the Uncanny


Kirkland Ewan
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper explores the uncanny dimensions of avatars and gamespaces in survival horror videogames. The avatar’s combination of animation and lifelessness personifies Freud’s notion of the uncanny. Simultaneously, the cybernetic interaction between player and machine, whereby the digital figure appears to act with autonomy and agency, unsettles the boundaries between dead object and living person. Spaces in survival horror games characterise the uncanny architecture of horror films and literature. Many suggest the unsettling psychological disturbance lurking behind the homely and the familiar. A recurring aspect of survival horror combines the investigation of a protagonist’s origins, a return to the family home, and the exploration of gynecological spaces – blood red corridors, womb-like caverns, bloody chambers – reproducing what is for Freud the primal site of the uncanny.

 

Where Do Game Design Ideas Come From? Invention and Recycling in Games Developed in Sweden


Hagen Ulf
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

The game industry is often accused for not being original and inventive enough, making sequels and transmediations instead of creating new game concepts and genres. Idea creation in game development has not been studied much by scholars. This paper explores the origin of game design ideas, with the purpose of creating a classification of the domains the ideas are drawn from. Design ideas in 25 games, developed by the four main game developers in Sweden, have been collected mainly through interviews with the designers and through artifact analyses of the games. A grounded theory approach was then used to develop categories “bottom-up” from the collected data. This resulted in four main categories and a number of sub categories, describing different domains that game design ideas are drawn from. The analysis of the game design ideas also showed that all games consist of a recycled part and an inventive part, and that the ideas in the recycled part mainly come from domains that are closely related to games. This indicates that games perhaps would be more inventive if design ideas were drawn from more distant domains.

 

Evaluating Interactive Entertainment using Breakdown: Understanding Embodied Learning in Video Games


Ryan William Siegel Martin A.
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper describes evaluating interactive entertainment by understanding embodied learning in games, which is a perspective that situates the learning that a player must go through to play a game in a skill-based environment. Our goal was to arrive at a tool for designers to improve learnability from this perspective. To study embodied learning, we use the concept of breakdown, which happens when our experience fails to aid our everyday actions and decision-making. We conducted a study to investigate learning in games from which we constructed a framework of 17 patterns of breakdown and a set of guidelines to aid heuristic evaluation of video games and to help designers support breakdown in interactions, which support players’ learning, so that they do not become breakdowns in illusion, which break players’ immersion.

 

Towards Data-Driven Drama Management: Issues in Data Collection and Annotation


Drachen Anders Hitchens Michael Jhala Arnav Yannakakis Georgios
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

One of the key questions in the design and development of interactive drama is structuring an experience for participants such that an engaging, coherent narrative is presented while enabling a high degree of perceived meaningful interactivity. This paper proposes a new approach to the design of intelligent drama managers (DMs) where DM strategies are learned from a corpus of data collected from pen-and-paper RPG game sessions with expert human game masters. In particular, this paper focuses on the issues relating to the collection and annotation of relevant data from recorded gameplay sessions.

 

Textual Analysis, Digital Games, Zombies


Carr Diane
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper is a contribution to ongoing debates about the value and limitations of textual analysis in digital games research. It is argued that due to the particular nature of digital games, both structural analysis and textual analysis are relevant to game studies. Unfortunately they tend to be conflated. Neither structural nor textual factors will fully determine meaning, but they are aspects of the cycle through which meaning is produced during play. Meaning in games is emergent, and play is a situated practice. Undertaking the textual analysis of a game does not necessarily involve ignoring these points. Textual analysis, like any methodology, does have limitations. The specifics of these limitations, however, will depend on the particular model of textuality employed. These issues are explored through an analysis of the survival horror game, Resident Evil 4.

 

Experiential Narrative in Game Environments


Calleja Gordon
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

This paper explores the contentious notion of experiential narrative and proposes the first step in a narrative framework for game environment. It argues for a shift in emphasis from story-telling, the dominant mode of narrative in literature and cinema, to story generation. To this effect the paper forwards a perspective on experiential narrative that is grounded in the specific qualities of the game. This avoids the over-generalization that tends to accompany discussions of experiential narrative while retaining the cognitive dimension in play.